Noremberg Laws for Soviet Jews Seen in Reich As Part of Red-nazi Pact

December 29, 1939

NEW YORK (Dec. 28)

Oswald Garrison Villard, noted journalist, reported in The Nation today that “responsible circles in Germany” held the belief that the Nuremberg racial laws would be applied to the Jews in Soviet Russia as part of the Soviet-Nazi agreement.

Date for institution of the laws, Villard wrote in an article mailed from The Hague on Nov. 20, was placed at within six months of conclusion of the agreement. The Soviet-Nazi non-aggession pact was signed on August 23.

Villard, who had spent some time in Germany during an extensive European tour from which he recently returned, declared: “One other piece of bad news I must give. It is widely believed in responsible circles in Germany that part of the bargain with Stalin calls for the application of the Nuremberg laws to Russian Jews, and that this will be done within six months from the signing of the pact. It is not thought that such laws will actually be put on the statute books. Stalin will simply give certain orders; that will be enough.”

The article, captioned “The Latest Anti-Jewish Horror,” is devoted largely to a description of the Nazi efforts to set up a Jewish “reservation” in Nazi Poland. Villard suggested that “a tremendous wave of denunciation from non-Jews, led, let us say, by the Quakers, might help, because the Germans are particularly anxious just now not to draw America into the war. I recall those wonderful mass-meetings at the time of the Kishinev massacres in Russia, one in Carnegie Hall with ex-President Cleveland speaking. If ever a similar outcry were called for, it is now.”